Astra, which produces print work for 50 PrintStop retail franchises and commercial clients across New Zealand, achieved certification through Heidelberg’s ISO Accreditation Service. The vendor performed a Print Colour Management (PCM) analysis, which included optimising and improving press performance, over several days.
Astra also sent proofs to Germany to be certified by FOGRA to the ISO 12647-7 standard.
Astra operations manager Symon Yendoll (pictured, left) said: “Having a uniform, wide spread and easily understood colour management model is very important particularly when you are dealing with the franchise stores. The ISO certification ensures our franchise operators that we are printing to the international standard, which removes any opportunity for dispute over colour.”
“We are a very process and systems driven company so it wasn’t as big a cultural shift as I had at first imagined. Before achieving certification we had a good regime with colour management, but we couldn’t be sure that what we were targeting was to the right standard. Working to the standard removes all of the inconsistencies in colour management and gives us total control.”
“Now colour passes on the back of the press are unheard of and that’s because the customer has confidence in the output. If you are working to the standard you don’t change the colour at the press. Removing the need for colour passes has made a massive difference to the business. We can print three jobs in the time it takes to do a colour pass, so the time savings alone are significant,” he added.
Yendoll described the ability to monitor colour on a daily basis as “like having an early warning system”.
“If dot gain wanders a little on any particular colour we can pick it up straight away and fix it before it becomes a problem. Being able to measure and compare alerts us to potential issues well before the problem is visible to the human eye,” he said.
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